22/02/2005

Books this Season: Politics

Winter 2004/2005

In "Chinas Rebellen" ("Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing"), Ian Buruma tells of exiled Chinese dissidents
in the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Chinese
mainland. On his travels, Buruma met the legendary Wei Jingshen,
student leaders from the Tien An Men protests in 1989, labour
organisers in the Shenzhen free trade zone, underground Christians in
provincial backwaters ("Jesus was a democrat") and opposition
politicians in Hong Kong and Singapore. Courageous, intelligent if not
brilliant people, they have paid a high price for their courage. Their
problem is that they are often hopelessly at loggerheads and overly
suspicious of one another. Admitting he sometimes wished they would all
go to the devil, Buruma shows a healthy scepticism for the achievements
of the "children of the dragon". Die Zeit and Der Spiegel praise the book, while the FAZ regrets a lack of understanding for China's cultural specificity.Seymour Hersh's"Die Befehlskette" ("Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib") receives almost reverential reviews in the German Feuilletons. Hersh collects and expands on the pieces he wrote on Abu Ghraib
for the New Yorker, showing in detail how the liberty to mete out
torture was granted by the senior level in Washington. The FR has nothing but admiration for Hersh's exhaustive research and serious use of sources, while Ulrich Greiner in Die Zeit calls "Chain of Command" the best book available on life behind the scenes in the Bush administration. The texts are thoroughly researched, and rechecked in detail by the New Yorker's editors. Greiner is astounded by the extent to which Hersh has access to information and appraisals from within the White House. Hersch shows in harrowing detail how the "carte blanche" for torture in Abu Ghraib came from on high.

Things take a theoretical turn with Francis Fukuyama's "Staaten bauen" ("State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century"). In the Taz, Warnfried Dettling calls the book a "political event of the first order".
For Fukuyama, building strong states is the most important political
challenge of the 21st century. But these states can't be allowed to get
fat. Social expenditures must be cut back, and administrations
streamlined. Educational systems must be made more effective, and
judiciaries more reliable. In Die Zeit, Herfried Münkler links
the boom in interest in the state as institution to widespread fears of
international terror and the prevailing will to overcome chaos and
adversity.

America's number two conservative thinker also draws
much acclaim. In "Who Are We" ("Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National
Identity"), Samuel Huntington inquires into the American identity, concluding that the protestant, Anglo-Saxon
roots of the United States are threatened by America's growing Hispanic
population. The FAZ writes that despite a somewhat bullheaded
approach, Huntington is addressing an important set of questions with
the book. Claus Leggewie in Die Zeit decries the work as an anti-immigration manifesto, but aggrees with the FAZ that the problems Huntington deals with are very real.

Among the non-American political works to receive positive reviews in the German press is Gilles Kepel's"Die neuen Kreuzzüge" ("The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West"). Across the board, critics commend Kepel's profound knowledge of Islamic culture. While Alexandra Senfft in the SZ finds Kepel's theses on the emergence of Islamic terrorism not entirely new, she nevertheless praises his mastery at compressing considerable detail into a readable account. Among the many causes that led militant Islamism to become an "integral component of the West", Kepel has isolated "American neoconservatives, pro-occupation Israeli politicians, reactionary Arab leaders and international networks of militant Islamists." All of them are linked in a "baneful cooperation", to which the Americans, of all people, seek to turn a blind eye. Rather than accepting the unpleasant fact that responsibility for terror cells like al-Qaida can be traced back to Cold War policies, America continues to wage war against its own creation, and thereby worsens the situation. For the author, the solution lies in the modernisation of Islam, for example by integrating modern Muslims in Western democracies. A good-minded thought, but as Senfft comments, an end to the terror threat does not seem to be in the cards for the foreseeable future.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

A precision engineer of the emotions, Peter Nadas traces the European upheavals of the past century in his colossal and epic novel "Parallel Stories", which was published in English in December. The core and epicentre of the novel is the body, which bears the marks of history and trauma. In his seemingly chaotic intertwining of lives and stories, Nadas penetrates the depths of the human animal with unique insight. A review by Joachim Sartoriusread more

Wednesday 1 February, 2012

The USA and the USSR should not simply be thought of as arch enemies of the Cold War. Beyond ideology, the two nations were deeply interested in one another. Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov were thrilled by the American Way of Life in 1935/6, John Steinbeck and Robert Capa praised the sheer vitality of the Russian people in 1947. Historian Karl Schlögel reviews a perfect pair of travel journals. Photo by Ilf and Petrov.read more

Monday 23 January 2012

Turkish-born author, actor and director Emine Sevgi Özdamar was recently awarded the Alice Salomon Prize for Poetics. Coming to West Berlin in 1965, Özdamar first learned German at the age of 19. After stage school she went on to become the directorial assistant to Benno Besson and Matthias Langhoff at the Volksbühne in East Berlin while still living in West Berlin. Harald Jähner warmly lauds the author's uniquely visual sense of her acquired language and her ability to overcome the seemingly insurmountable dividing line through the city.read more

Monday 9 January 2012

Nadezhda Mandelstam's personal memories of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, her intimate friend, offer a unique and moving testimony to friendship and resistance over decades of persecution. Published only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the text is still unavailable in English but has recently been translated into German. A unique historical document, celebrating an intellectual icon in anage of horror. Portrait of Akhmatova by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.read more

Thursday 8 December, 2011

This year is the 200th anniversary of the death of German writer Heinrich von Kleist. The author Gertrud Leutenegger has a very Kleistian afternoon on Elba, when she encounters the Marquise von O in the waiting room of a very strange eye doctor. read more

Tuesday 4 October, 2011

Eugen Rugehas won theGerman Book Prizewith his novel "In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts" (In times of fading light), an autobiographical story of an East German family. The award is presented to the best German-language novel just before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Here we present this year's six shortlisted authors and exclusive English translationsof excerpts from their novels.

Wednesday 28 September, 2011

Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu escaped into exile in Germany in July this year. His new book about his life in Chongqing prison has just been published in German as "Für Ein Lied und Hundert Lieder". Both book and author have a life-threatening odyssey behind them. I am overjoyed that Liao Yiwu is here with us and not at home in prison. By Herta Müllerread more

Monday 12 September, 2011

No other European city suffered more in World War II than Leningrad under siege, when over a million people lost their lives. Russian literature delivers a rich testimony of the events which have been all but forgotten by the West. Only a few works, though, also do the disaster aesthetic justice. By Oleg Yurievread more

Tuesday 6 September 2011

In this apology for the vice of reading, Bora Cosic describes the magnificent and fantastic discoveries of one of its practitioners Ã¢â¬â revealing how texts contain what we bring to them, how we sometimes read without reading and how books are not only found in books but many other places.ÃÂ
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Monday 4 July, 2011

The most successful Croatian book of 2008 sold exactly 1,904 copies. Not what one could really call a market, although together the successor republics represent a single language community. A look at the situation of publishers and authors in the former Yugoslavia. By Norbert Mappes-Niediek.
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Monday 20 May, 2011

Algeria's youth: Frustrated, isolated and in the stranglehold of clandestine political structures. Young Algerians are rebelling against being locked in traditional political and social structures, but have no chance of a national uprising like that in Tunisia, says Algerian author Boualem Sansal. An interview with Reiner Wandler. read more

Wednesday 13 April, 2011

Andre Müller Germany's most insightful and most feared interviewer is dead. Elfriede Jelinek said of him in her obituary: "Andre Müller goes all the way into people and then he makes them into language, and only then do they become themselves." Read his interviews with Ingmar Bergman and Hitler's sculptor Arno Breker in English. Photo courtesy Bibliothek der Provinzread more

Monday 4 April, 2011

Serbia was the country in focus at this year's Leipzig Book Fair Ã¢â¬â its extensive literature seems to be bound up in the straitjacket of politics. Serbia is having a hard time with Europe, and Europe is having a hard time with Serbia. Although there are signs of a softening stance, the country is still locked up in the self-imposed nationalist isolation into which it manoeuvred itself as the aggressor in the Yugoslavian war of secession. A visit there inspires mixed feelings. By Jörg PlathPhoto: Sreten Ugricicread more